The Romance Resonance
"The Romance Resonance" is the sixth episode of the seventh season of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory. This episode first aired on Thursday, October 24, 2013. Summary Sheldon makes an amazing discovery only to shoot himself down when he finds that he made an error. After Howard writes a song for Bernadette, Penny mulls over making a romantic gesture for her guy. Extended Plot At the Cheesecake Factory, Penny is serving the rest of the gang. She asks Sheldon who is very engrossed in his calculations/ what he's doing and he tells her to not bother him since he is " Flow (psychology)|in the zone". Amy comments that the last time he was this involved, he figured out graphene#electron transport|electron transport in graphene and who should get into his treehouse|tree fort in case he ever gets one. She adds that she didn't make the list. Penny asks him whether he wants to take a break and eat. Leonard reminds her that he is both happy and quiet which is like finding a unicorn and Bigfoot. Bernadette and Howard show up late and apologize. Bernadette has some exciting news about the raccoon virus she has just acquired which is that the virus could jump species and infects humans. Howard makes her go wash her hands and then tells everyone about the song he is writing for Bernadette for the anniversary of their first date. He wants them to be his instrumental backup. Penny asks what horrible thing he is trying to make up for and Howard considers it money in the bank. Howard asks Sheldon if he will help and he is so engrossed that he didn't know he was at the Cheesecake Factory. Walking up the stairs, Leonard is talking about what Howard is doing for Bernadette and how wonderful it is. Penny wants to know why Leonard doesn't do something romantic for their The Tangerine Factorfirst date]]. Since they had breakup|broken up so many times, Leonard doesn't know which first date they are talking about. He has done lots of romantic things for Penny, but it seems she hasn't done anything for him and Leonard feels that intercourse|sex doesn't count. She mentions a bed and breakfast weekend, but Leonard set it up and all Penny did was have sex with him and ruined a rocking chair. Penny protests that she can be romantic, but Leonard doesn't believe it. Penny then becomes determined to romance his Butt|ass off. Sheldon who is still "in the zone" keeps walking up the stairs. Leonard figures that he will know what happened when he falls off the roof. In apartment 4A, Sheldon is still deep in his whiteboard calculations. Leonard offers him tea and he doesn't answer. Leonard then says that Sheldon hadn't spoken in hours and it worries him. Sheldon speaks, "Leonard. Prepare to be humbled and weep at the glory of my genius." Leonard looks at his work and is astounded that Sheldon has figured out how to synthetic element|synthesize a new island of stability|stable super-heavy element. Sheldon exclaims that no one except him has ever done that. Then he starts dancing around the apartment chanting about his marvelous brain. At work, Howard tells Raj and Leonard that he is almost finished with his song. Leonard agrees to play the cello, but denies that it is "Cool (aesthetic)|cool". Raj agrees to play his ukulele, the "tiny ridiculous guitar". Sheldon joins them and starts talking about his discovery. He says that he doesn't want to be carried around the cafeteria on their shoulders because he doesn't like heights, motion sickness, or their necks touching his Buttocks|butt. Howard congratulates him and Raj called the discovery inspiring. Some scientists in China have tested his work on a cyclotron and got promising results. Leonard is impressed by this news. Sheldon tells them that they called it the greatest thing since the Communist Party though the Communist Party probably told them to say that. Sheldon likes China because they know how to keep people in line. Howard asks what comes next. Sheldon replies: more testing, more success, and more celebrity|fame. Sheldon still promises to remain the same down to earth, humility|humble Joe he has always been. (Ha!) Leonard tells him that that is good to know as Sheldon steals his cookie because he discovered an element. Penny asks Raj to come over and help her plan a romantic evening for her and Leonard. Raj tells her that the way to a man's heart is through his.. "Pants," Penny says finishing his Sentence (linguistics)|sentence. She adds that Leonard says that sex doesn't count. Raj thinks that it's sad that she has only one arrow in her quiver and she can't use it. Raj then tells her that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Penny is reluctant to cook for him since he's such a picky eater. Too salt|salty. Too dry. Too combustion|burned and freezing|frozen at the same time. Raj then describes the end of the movie "Dirty Dancing". He also mentions standing outside his window holding up a boom box which turned out to be from from the movie "Say Anything (film)|Say Anything". Raj explains that he is a lonely guy who watches a lot of movies. Penny can't understand why being romantic is so hard. Raj mentions that she has never had to do it since she is young, beauty|beautiful, and men are always throwing themselves at her. Penny figures she can't be sorry about that. While Sheldon is busy saving all his souvenirs from his discovery, Amy is helping him catalog them. She doesn't think that the Smithsonian will want the magic marker he used on his whiteboard to make his discovery. Those kinds of comments are why she is not on the list for Sheldon's tree fort. Sheldon gets a message that they are writing an article about him in the journal "Physics Today". Amy is very proud of him. Next he picks up his copy of "The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" he used in his work. Looking at it he realizes that the reaction rates he used were wrong. Instead of square centimeters, he used the units of square meters. Sheldon was off by a factor of ten thousand. Amy points out that the Chinese team did find the element. Sheldon concludes that there must be some resonance between the elements that he didn't know about. Amy wonders if he just got lucky. Sheldon is hurt and says that he does not get lucky. Amy quietly says, "You and me both, brother." Even though Amy says that this work is still ground-breaking, Sheldon can't get beyond the fact that the greatest scientific breakthrough of his life is based on a blunder. He isn't a genius; he is a fraud. Amy tells him that in neuroscience they often find something in one place in the brain that they thought was in another one. Then Sheldon gets madder that it's worst that he is not just a fraud, he is almost a biologist. The next day on the way to work, Leonard tells him to stop beating himself up. Sheldon thinks that he is getting credit he doesn't deserve and that it's going to haunt him for the rest of his life. That mistake will continue to stare back at him like the time Raj waxed Leonard's eyebrows. Sheldon wants it to stop; however, Leonard explains that once it's out there, it's out there. It's like the science equivalent of a sex tape. Sheldon shoots back that he's rather have a sex tape, although he also agrees that he doesn't know what a sex tape is The next day at the cafeteria, Howard is going over the final details of their performance for Bernadette. Raj wants to add a little rap to it, which Howard shoots down since he wants it to be romantic. Someone shouts out, "There he is," as Sheldon enters the room and applause breaks out. Sheldon objects as someone adds "Woo!" Sheldon wants no more woos except for Dr. Wu, who is at an adjacent table (furniture)|table. He again asks everyone not to celebrate his bone-headed mistake. Raj asks if they did not find the element. Sheldon replies that they did find the element as applause again breaks out. He sits down and wonders how he can make them stop loving him. Leonard replies that he could invite them to live with him. In a private dining room, everyone is getting their instruments ready. Howard has a keyboard, Raj has his ukulele, Leonard has his cello, Sheldon has a recorder, Amy has her harp, and Penny has a tambourine. Penny says that she knows that Bernadette is going to love it. Leonard says that it must be great to have someone do something like that. Howard wonders what is taking Bernadette so long so he goes to check on her. Sheldon finds out that the National Science Foundation wants to give him a big grant and wonders when this nightmare is going to end. Leonard tells him that despite everything, they are all really proud of him. Amy then tells him that she is not proud of him. She has decided that Sheldon is right and that he does not deserve the credit since he misread the numbers on a table, an easy table at that. Honestly, she is embarrassed for him. "That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard," he replies. Her comment allows her to be on his tree fort list which excites Amy. Penny says to herself that everyone is better at romance than she is. Howard comes in and explains that there was a accident at his wife's laboratory|lab and she is in the hospital in quarantine just in case. Otherwise she is fine. Sheldon adds to the bad news that he just got a raise. Howard finds Bernadette behind glass and asks what happened. She tried to move too many petri dishes of the raccoon virus at once and dropped one, but she is fine. The gang shows up with the keyboard in hand and Howard announces that in honor of their first date they are going to celebrate with a song "If I Didn't Have You". Sheldon is scared to come closer since she might be Contagious disease|contagious (this would make no sense as she's in an isolation ward). He gets some hand sanitizer and then joins them. Howard plays a song about how lost he'd be without her. The gang provides backup and sings the refrains. Bernadette finds it amazing and says that she is shaking. Sheldon takes that as a sign that she is sick and leaves. At Penny's she and Leonard are having a candle light dinner. Her dinner tastes delicious because she has discovered the flavor packet that went with it. Penny tells Leonard that there is a crap storm of romance coming his way. She turns on some romantic music and Leonard thinks that she is pretty confident. She spreads out rose petals on the floor as she walks toward her bedroom. Leonard notes that she is pulling out all the stops since she even made her bed. She gave it a lot of thought and she bought him something to show him how much she loves him, a first edition of "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Penny remembered that it was his favorite book growing up. They had seen it together and Leonard had already bought it. Penny then calls herself the worst. Leonard calls it thoughtful and then she tells him that he does lots of thoughtful things. Penny pulls out a box of everything he has ever given her. Some of them are a plane ticket he bought her when she was too poor to go home for the holidays, a rose he left on her windshield, just because, the eleven page letter (message)|letter he wrote to her after they first time they had sex. Leonard cannot believe that she saved all this stuff. She saved it because it was him. The box also included a pregnancy test. Penny told him that she saved ONLY the first one. They embrace lovingly. Finally, Amy and Sheldon are in his apartment. Sheldon still can't believe that he read the table wrong and blames her. She has been a distraction to him since he first met her. She apologizes and Sheldon says that all he wants to do is kiss her, not on the cheek, but on the mouth like mother|mommies and father|daddies do. Amy is getting a little breathless. She says, "Oh, Sheldon." As they lean closer to each other, she hears her name called and comes back to the Cheesecake Factor. Sheldon asks her if she heard what he said. Amy replies that she can't talk because she is "in the zone". She sits there smiling. Credits * Guest starring: ** Tom Fonss as Student * Teleplay: Steven Molaro, Steve Holland & Maria Ferrari * Story: Eric Kaplan, Jim Reynolds & Tara Hernandez Critics *Jesse Schedeen of IGN: "... Sheldon was given the rare opportunity to be humbled when his massive scientific breakthrough turned out to be a case of pure, dumb luck. He's a character that needs to be taken down a peg every now and then just for good form. The added benefit to Sheldon's latest scientific crisis was that it allowed Amy to swoop in and save him. It was a little touching to see that she alone understood that what Sheldon needed to hear was strict, unfiltered criticism...For Leonard and Penny, their latest struggle was over the realization that they have no real romance in their lives outside the bedroom. Again, that might have made for a weak episode if this conflict were at the forefront, but as a B-plot it worked well enough..."The Romance Resonance" wasn't the strongest episode of the season, but nor was it the weakest. It was a decent effort without much in the way of memorable humor but plenty of heartwarming character moments to make up for it." *Dhruv Rao of the DR Club gave the episode an A-, stating that the plot was "entertaining and funny." http://the-drclub.webs.com/apps/blog/show/34509539-the-romance-resonance-s7e6 *IMDb user reviews Notes *'Title Reference:' The very different ways that the three couples express romance are examined. Penny trying to be romantic with Leonard, while Resonance is referring to some resonance#atomic, particle and molecular|atomic, particle or molecular resonance as in Sheldon's research. *Taping date: October 8, 2013. *Chuck Lorre's vanity card. http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=427 *This episode was watched by 16.98 million people with a rating of 5.2 (adults 18-49). *Total viewers including DVR users 22.97 million. *The Big Bang Theory was ranked #2 for the week ending October 27, 2013. *This episode aired in Canada on October 24, 2013 with 3.46 million viewers with a weekly ranking of #1. *In the United Kingdom, this episode aired on December 5, 2013 with 2.36 million viewers and a weekly ranking of #1. *Episode transcript https://bigbangtrans.wordpress.com/series-7-episode-06-the-romance-resonance/ Costume Notes *Sheldon wears his De Oxy Ribo shirt from the Thinker Collection , the Green Arrow logo t-shirt , the blue Vetrivian Superman t-shirt from FatTees and in Amy's imagination, his purple checkered shirt (unavailable). *At his dinner with Penny, Leonard wears a grey t-shirt from twicethetees containing the Seal of Rassilon from Doctor Who. Trivia *Sheldon's whiteboard contains electron configuration|electronic configurations of transuranium element|superheavy elements. *Although there is no Hubei Institute for Nuclear Physics, there is an Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University|Hua-Zhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0375947495003728. *Sheldon feels that Amy said something romantic to him, although Amy denies it. *The first date of Howard and Bernadette took place in "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary" (S3E5). *The experience of Sheldon in this episode is quite similar to that in "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation" (S3E1): he thought he made a breakthrough in his study, but later found he had not, although, rather than the earlier time, it was his own fault about the mistake, not the fault of the guys (who set him up). *Not the first time that Bernadette gets quarantined because of a careless mistake in the handling of a virus; the exact same thing happened in "The Justice League Recombination" (S4E11), and she spent Christmas in quarantine. *The event that Sheldon focused on the electron transport in graphene happened in "The Einstein Approximation" (S3E14). It is curious that Amy actually mentions this event, since Sheldon and Amy did not get to know each other until "The Lunar Excitation" (S3E23), thus she could not have experienced this event. Furthermore, it is even weirder for Amy to say "The time before that, he was making a list of who's allowed in his tree fort if he ever gets one; still can't believe I didn't make the cut". It is either possible that Amy was told by it by Sheldon or this is an error. Or the two events Amy was talking about happened again at some point in their relationship. *Leonard wrote an 11-Page letter to Penny to thank her for the first time they had sex. In accordance, in "The Pirate Solution" (S3E4) Penny revealed that Leonard said "thank you" every time after they had sex, and told him it wasn't necessary; and then Leonard implied he would send Penny a greeting card. **Quite curiously, when Penny shows Leonard the things that he has given her, the most romantic one, the snowflake} that Leonard brought back from the North Pole and preserved in polyvinyl acetyl resin, does not appear between all the other things. (presented in "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation"-S3E1; later reappeared in "The Toast Derivation"-S4E17). *According to Simon Helberg's tweet, the song If I didn't have you that (in the show) Howard writes for Bernadette, is (in reality) composed by Kate Micucci (who played Raj's ex-girlfriend Lucy in several episodes of Season 6 and some of Season 7) and Riki Lindhome (who played Ramona Nowitzki in "The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem", "The Long Distance Dissonance" and "The Proposal Proposal". *Joss Whedon and Firefly (TV series)|Firefly were mentioned in the earliest version of The Roommate Agreement that Sheldon made Leonard to sign at their very first meeting in "The Staircase Implementation" (S3E22). *Sheldon claims that he doesn't want the group to hold him up on their shoulders and parade him (before he found out he made a mistake); however, this action is exactly what he wanted them to do when he went to court for reckless driving, to which they refused as they went to Stan Lee's autograph signing along. (S3E16) *Sheldon also takes a cookie from Leonard while bragging, however he normally doesn't touch other people's food in case it's contagious; however, due to Sheldon being in the zone, he probably was not paying attention to his rule. *Both Sheldon and Amy go "in the zone" when they are deep in thought oblivious of the real world. Sheldon is when he is concentrating on his work, and Amy is when she is daydreaming. *Flashbacks in "The Staircase Implementation" (S3E22) showed a younger Penny taking a pregnancy test. *The copy of "Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy" Penny gives to Leonard is a hard-cover; the First Edition was a Category:Episodes Category:Season 7 Category:Episodes with musical numbers Category:Shamy Category:Sheldon has a date Category:Amy has a date Category:Howard-Bernadette Category:Romance Category:The Cheesecake Factory Category:Featured Article Category:Song Category:Sheldon's Discovery Category:Amy Category:Bernadette Category:Penny Category:Raj Category:Howard Category:Leonard Category:Sheldon Category:Transcripts Category:Season 7 episodes Category:2013 episodes Category:The Big Bang Theory Category:Raj Talks Without Alcohol Category:Autumn episodes